Certain online financial transactions, such as opening a new account require accurate identity verification to insure that the account is not being opened fraudulently. Stated in other words, identity verification insures that the person who is opening the account online is, in fact, the person that they purport to be in the online account application.
The timeliness of identifying non-viable applications, i.e., applications in which the identity of the applicant is not verified and therefore the application is declined, is paramount to assuring that the financial institution or other account providing entity limits their costs. In this regard, the earlier in the application approval process that an application can be identified as non-viable the less processing costs occur. In a similar regard, the accuracy of the identity verification process is equally important to assure that the financial institution does not incur unnecessary costs. In this regard, falsely approved applications (i.e., applications in which the applicant fraudulently falsifies identity but are not declined by the approval process) can cost the financial institution, in terms of processing and any losses that incur due to subsequent fraudulent activity.
Currently, financial institutions rely on third party data to verify identity and subsequent decisioning assistance for approval/decline of a financial transaction request, such as opening an account or the like. The third party entity that supplies the data may be a credit reporting entity. In many instances the third party data includes an identity score however, the identity score is typically geared toward identification of credit risk, rather than the critical identification and fraud prevention functions related to certain financial transactions, such as deposit account openings and the like. As such, the identity score is typically not used as the sole indicator for identity verification. Additionally, the third party entities may provide, in addition to the identity score, other identity related information, referred to herein as potential fraud indicators, related to the applicant and/or the information submitted by the applicant. In many instances, these potential fraud indicators are not reflected in the identity score, which is an additional reason why the identity score is not implemented as the sole indicator for identity verification. In addition, the presence of potential fraud indicators in a financial transaction request often requires manual processing on behalf of the financial institution, which, as previously discussed, is a costly endeavor.
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, methods, computer program products and the like for identity-based transaction decisioning, for example account opening decisioning, that provides accurate fraud prevention and efficiently identifies non-viable transactions/applications, so as to limit the costs incurred by the transaction-offering entity.